The invaluable Bioedge has done it again. A member of the Dutch royal family was severely injured and brain damaged. But according to Bioedge, the family had to take him to London for treatment because there are no specialized centers for treating the severely brain damaged people over age 25 in the Netherlands. From the story:
The Netherlands does not have specialised centres for treating brain-damaged patients over 25, so the royal family has been forced to seek treatment abroad. It appears that the standard for care in the Netherlands is different than in neighbouring Germany, for instance. German doctors use biological life as the standard, while Dutch doctors use “brain death”. If Dutch patients are permanently neurologically unresponsive, they are allowed to die. In Germany, on the other hand, there are between 3,000 and 5,000 patients living in a permanent vegetative state. In the Netherlands there are very few.
“Brain death” isn’t the same thing as permanently non responsive. But I take this article to mean that PVS patients have no specialty care available if they are over 25, while in Germany—as in the USA—such severely disabled patients can receive proper care.
Good grief! Hello Dutch critics of Secondhand Smoke! Is this true? And what do you think about the public talk of a euthanasia when the prince wouldn’t be able to ask for it?
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